


A Little Bit of Red

by DreadPirateXun



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Paces a oneshot like a slowburn and Dies, Riku “this might as well be happening” kingdomhearts, Unbeta-d we die like- well we just die, Vampire AU, allusions to date rape and one night stands but nothing serious, mild gore warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23113858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreadPirateXun/pseuds/DreadPirateXun
Summary: In which sora brings home a beautiful man from the bar(This was supposed to be a quick drabble, I swear)
Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 52





	A Little Bit of Red

**Author's Note:**

> you sit there in your heartache, waiting on some beautiful boy to~

_Silver hair fanned out over the dull pavement, as still and quiet as the body it was attached to. The only visible movement came from the gentle night breeze and the slow, seeping puddle underneath, glimmering_ red _in the moonlight._

_The quiet sound of footsteps approached in the distance._

\---------

“Hey… you awake yet?” A soft voice reached Riku’s ears. He didn’t recognize it, but since he’d been out drinking at the bar last night, it wasn’t exactly unusual for him.

His face scrunched up when he couldn’t at least put a face to the name, which _was_ unusual. He tried to roll over, and the movement sent his body _exploding_ in pain, waves of white-hot dizziness crashing over him until all he could focus on was trying to breathe. He felt like getting hit by a _truck_ would’ve hurt less than this.

“H-hey woah woah buddy! Don’t try to move yet, your body’s still pretty banged up!” He felt hands on his (still clothed) shoulders gently shove him back down. The touch was like fire to what felt like a large gash running down from his shoulder to somewhere around his rib, and he choked down another grunt of pain. What the _hell_ did they get up to last night?

He cracked opened his eyes, and deep, deep red eyes filled his vision, inches away from his face. 

He screamed and shoved him [it?] away, making to scramble for the other side of the bed when his side flared up like he was being ripped in half. He choked out half a sob and let himself collapse back down to the bed. He vaguely remembered thinking the guy last night was a little seedy through the buzz of alcohol in his system, and the thought rose like bile in his throat that something might be very, _very_ wrong.

He distantly registered the feeling of hands flitting uselessly along his back, hesitant to actually touch him as he rode out the pain from moving. Whatever it was this person wanted from him, he was helpless to stop it. 

He pushed his face deeper into the comforter beneath him; he was _not_ going to cry.

“...ripped open your side again- that is _not_ going to heal well- god I’m so sorry-” His breath hitched as the hands (gently) prodded the area around his side where the pain was the worst, and he realized the wound felt… big. Too big. More like he’d been mauled by a giant bear than had a kidney or a liver chopped out like he’d been expecting.

“...Wh-” He choked, and coughed violently into the sheets. The hands braced his shoulders (carefully avoiding the gash on his left one) and the voice was saying _something_ he couldn’t make out over the sound of his own coughs.

His coughing fit finally subsided, and he felt the hands pat his shoulders in an attempt to be reassuring. He looked down and saw blood coughed onto the sheets.

“Wh- wh at. H… happened to me, last night?” He whispered, hoarse, almost too quiet for anyone but himself to hear.

“Well... it’s kind of a long story, but… you kinda, sorta… died? Mostly?” 

“Wh- mostly?!” He hacked another short round of coughs into the sheets after an aborted attempt to sit up. “What t-he hell do you mean, ‘died’?”

The gash in his shoulder, the one in his side, _something_ wrong with his arm and left leg (that felt like they’d been braced and wrapped up in the time he’d been out)... he had a fleeting thought that he wished he _had_ died rather than deal with this much pain, and whatever red-eyed _something_ had in store for him. 

“You were bleeding on the ground- like, a _lot_ of blood- dumped there like some _empty juice carton_ , I couldn’t just leave you there! I- I panicked, okay?” -The sound of shuffling behind him, like a hand being wrung through hair- “ _Nobody_ deserves to just… die like that, I had to do _something_.”

Riku moved to try to flip back over, gently this time, and the hands flitted around to guide him, rather than fight him. He made it to his back with a half-groan, half-sigh, and cautiously glanced over to his captor.

Red, red, unnaturally red eyes on a face laced with anxiety, framed by soft, unkempt brown hair. He looked… small, with a rounded, boyish jaw, but something about those eyes screamed _danger_ in every nerve in Riku’s body.

And he was completely at this thing’s mercy.

“H-hey hey woah, calm down, deep breaths.” He made a few aborted hand gestures, like he was trying to settle a horse. “Shit- I- ...look, I’m not gonna hurt you. I didn’t do this to you if that’s what you think. Do I really look like I go around mauling people in dark alleys?”

 _Yes_ , his brain supplied. It must’ve shown on his face, because the red eyed man visibly deflated.

“...I wouldn’t, just so you know. I don’t like hurting people if I can help it.” He fiddled with the hem of his tank top. “I didn’t see who _did_ do this to you, either. By the time I got there you were already… well, almost cold.”

“...so you’re… not gonna eat me?” _or worse_ , he thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice that one. 

“No! No, no, I’m not gonna eat you! You wouldn’t even taste good anymore anyway.” He… pouted, for lack of a better word. It was kind of… cute. 

“...anymore?” He glanced down at their mouth, and caught a glimmer of sharp, _too sharp_ teeth. Maybe not that cute.

“Well…” He fidgeted a little in his cross legged position on the bed, rocking side to side and refusing to meet his gaze. “I uh… kinda had to turn you to keep you from dying. You weren’t really gonna make it any other way.”

“Turn me… into what?” Slowly building dread settled deep in the pit of his stomach. He’d seen enough movies to know that whatever the man said next, he was not going to like it.

“A… vampire.” 

“A… what.”

“I turned you into a vampire. And then I took you back to my house and fixed you up because you’re kiiiinda my responsibility now and I swear I’ve never done this with anyone befo-”

“A VAMPIRE???”

“Er… yeah.”

“Like an actual, “I’m goving to svuck your bvlood” vampire??” Riku moved to sit up again, but _pain_ laced up his arm like a lightning strike when he tried to put pressure on it to move. He collapsed back down to the bed with a keening groan, more out of frustration than pain. 

“Okay first of all, rude. Second of all, stop trying to move. It’s still gonna take you a while to recover from all your injuries, even moreso if you keep _opening them back up_.” 

Riku bit back a snappy retort. Instead, he rested his head back and looked up at the ceiling. A part of his mind noted that it looked like a normal bedroom ceiling like you’d find in any house, not some ‘vampire lair’. He glanced to the side for windows. 

Huh, blackout curtains. The room’s well lit enough he hadn’t even noticed.

“I’ve been meaning to ask, what were you even doing out there alone in the middle of the night, anyway?” He hesitated. “And… uh. What’s your name?”

“Alone? No, I was-” Riku stiffened. What was he supposed to say to that? “I was…” 

He sighed. “I was gonna… spend the night with someone I met at the bar. I was pretty out of it, I don’t even remember the walk back.” 

“Wait- the gay bar down the street?” His hands shot to cover his mouth like he could shove the words back in.

Riku winced. ...Shit. “Yes, the… gay bar.”

“So you’re…”

“Yeah.”

“And the date?”

“Was a guy I met that night who bought me drinks.”

“That’s dangerous! You don’t even know the guy! He could’ve been-” He choked. “Well-” 

Riku burst out in a laugh before he could stop himself. The gashes along his chest flared up in agonizing pain and his laugh tapered off into a groan. 

“He could’ve... led me down a dark alley and tore me to pieces? Thanks, I’ll remember that next time.” Riku chuckled, albeit more subdued this time around. His head was still spinning, but it felt like the shock was starting to wear off.

“..next time?” He said quietly, and glanced away, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. “...You still haven’t told me your name, by the way.”

“What, you brought home a stranger without even knowing his name? Hey pot, kettle’s calling.” Riku huffed a laugh as the man fidgeted awkwardly in his spot. “...It’s Riku, by the way.”

“Riku. That’s a weird name.” He blew out a puff of breath. “Guess I’ll have to get used to it if you’re gonna be here a while.”

Riku tried to sit up, face scrunched and ready to retort, when the red-eyed man cracked a smile and put a hand to his chest to stop him. “Relax, relax, I’m just messing around. Riku’s a great name” -and muttered, a little more quietly- “even if it is a little… new age.”

“...New age?? You haven’t even told me yours yet.” Riku was frankly getting a little sick of mentally calling him ‘the red-eyed man’.

“Oh! Sorry, I’m Sora. I’ve only been around for a century or so, so sometimes all that newer stuff like naming conventions fly right over my head.” He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly, and Riku was still trying to wrap his head around even considering his name as ‘new’. 

“...You just think it’s new because you haven’t heard it before, don’t you.”

“No- well… maybe? I feel like I’d remember if I’d ever heard that name before.”

“Maybe you just- …. _wait_ , a century? I think you meant decade.” Sora didn’t look a day over 20, and that was being generous.

“A decade?! I just had my hundredth birthday, I’m not like 12!”

Riku laughed at his almost comically puffed up face, cutting short when his side flared up at the motion. He could barely imagine this guy swatting a fly at this point, let alone roaming the streets like some predator looking for their latest victim. He suppressed another huff of laughter at the mental image.

“To be fair, you don’t even look old enough to drink. What are you really, like 16?”

“‘Really’?? I was 22 when I turned, asshole!”

“Bullshit, I don’t even turn 22 for a few more months. I _refuse_ to believe you’re older than me.”

“By like a hundred years! I swear I could’ve had at least one more growth spurt before I turned, but now I’m stuck getting carded at bars _forever_.” Sora collapsed dramatically onto his crossed legs and let out a groan. “At least you’ll get to be hot forever.”

He glanced up and caught riku’s shocked face. Cheeks dusted pink, he glanced away. “Well, it’s true.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but his mind caught on something else.

“...what do you mean, ‘forever’?”

“Vampires live forever! We’re immortal, we don’t die.” Sora threw his hands up in the air. “I’ve been saying that this _whole_ time, you’re a vampire too now.” 

“...no I’m not? Wouldn’t I _know_ if I wasn’t human anymore?” He tried to feel if anything about himself was different, but the _big chunks of his torso missing_ made it hard to tell. He could hardly believe he survived like this in the first place. “...shouldn’t I be in a hospital?”

“You would kill people in a hospital! You- grragh-” He fisted his hair- “Just gimme a sec, I’ll be right back.” 

He sprung off the bed and darted out of the room. Riku heard a door open and shut, and Sora rushed back over to the bedside holding up a hand mirror.

“It’s not backed with silver so it works just fine- I don’t think they even make them like that anymore, thank god- but just- Look.” He shoved the mirror in Riku’s face.

Vivid, unnaturally red eyes stared back at him in shock. 

He moved his good hand up to touch his face, and saw it mirrored perfectly in his reflection. The same shade as Sora’s, framed by silver hair.

“...what the hell is this?”

“They’ll be like that for another couple days from turning while your body processes all your old human blood. Mine should fade back by tomorrow since I only drank enough to t-”

“You’re joking, right?” He watched his face shift in his reflection, his red, red, _too red_ eyes narrowing in perfect sync.

“...no, I’m not. I didn’t want to- I _couldn’t_ just… leave you there.” He fisted his hands in the sheets and locked _red_ eyes with Riku. “Look. I’m sorry for turning you into a monster. I’m sorry for taking away everything you’ve ever known and making you into a _monster_ like me.”

He takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “But I will _never_ be sorry for saving you. I don’t care if you hate me after this or never want to speak to me again, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least do _something_.”

“...a monster.” He was a monster now. Something no longer human? He absently pulled up his lip with a finger and noted his teeth were different. _Sharp_. 

“...I have work later tonight.” He needed to call his boss, tell him he couldn’t come in for his shift tonight, and maybe figure out a way to hide _red eyes and fangs_ without his coworkers noticing. He needed to go back home to his apartment and his roommate that hated him because he would take that any day over another minute of _this_. He needed-

“You can’t go back to work, you’d kill them all! It takes, like, _months_ to learn to control yourself enough to be around people again, you-”

He needed _out_.

He grit his teeth and shoved himself up from the bed. A surprised ‘woah!’ to his side was drowned out in a long groan of pain that was barely avoiding becoming a scream as Riku moved his feet to the side of the bed and tried to stand. 

_Agony_ shot up his left leg like a live wire and his legs buckled, sending him tumbling to the floor. The impact tore another scream from him but _he had to get away-_

“Riku! Holy shit, Riku! Here, stop, let me hel-”

“ _Don’t touch me!_ ”

He laid on the floor and slowly let his body ride out the pain. His forehead against the cool wood of the floor was both soothing and horrifically pathetic. He couldn’t even _think_ about getting back up, let alone escaping back home.

He heard retreating footsteps and a door shut.

\---------

He woke up minutes or maybe hours later, it was sort of hard to tell without being able to see the sun through the curtains. He’d been moved back to the bed at some point, and his shirt had been replaced with fresh bandages wrapped around his torso and stomach. That was… a lot of bandages. He must really be pretty banged up.

He didn’t see Sora anywhere in the room, but he heard bustling from somewhere outside so he was probably still nearby. 

He was starting to feel thirsty, but didn’t even want to _think_ about what that implied.

He groaned miserably. He might actually be stuck here for a while.

Sora came back in after a few minutes and quietly handed him a little blackened sippy cup with a straw. He took it, tentatively, already knowing with absolute certainty what was inside.

“...you’ll heal faster if you drink it.” His hands fiddled with the edge of his shirt, prodding at an invisible thread. 

He shot Sora a glance. “Will I die if I don’t?”

“Well, _yeah_ , eventually. People do tend to die if they don’t eat food.” He stopped himself from rolling his eyes in response. “But it’ll help your body close up your wounds faster so you can start walking around again.”

“...Where’d you get it?” He glanced back down to the cup in his hands.

“What, the- oh, the… er-”

“The blood.” He could smell it the minute Sora came in the room with it.

He sighed. “Yeah, the blood. I didn’t get it myself, if that’s what you think. We usually just go through blood banks.”

“I’ve donated to blood banks before. Does that mean…?”

“I mean, _maybe_? It’s not like it _all_ goes to us. Usually just surplus or blood that’s close to expiring.” He looked down to his hands. “For the most part it’s fine, but there are… some people that’d rather have it fresh.”

He glanced over pointedly to Riku.

“You should drink that. Sometimes people tend to get a little… feisty if they don’t drink anything for a while.” 

“What, am I gonna like, attack people if I don’t?”

Sora hesitated a few seconds too long for comfort. 

“You’re joking.”

Sora stared resolutely at the wall, shoulders hunching in himself.

“ _You can’t be serious_! I wouldn’t- I’m not gonna- I can barely stomach _this_ , and you’re telling me I’m gonna go out in the night and _attack_ _strangers_ to _eat them_?? You-” He started coughing violently, having jostled his side when he’d bent over to try to get in Sora’s face.

“...Look, I know this all isn’t… the best situation, but I would _never_ let you get to the point where you’d attack people, alright? I’m the one that turned you, so I’m gonna help you through it.” His fists clenched around the hem of his shirt. “I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Sora’s face looked pained, and Riku started to feel guilty for yelling at him. 

It wasn’t really his fault, anyway. It was Riku’s for trying to drown his life away in alcohol and one night stands. _He’s_ the one that made all the terrible decisions leading up to this point, and now this kid was just stuck picking up the pieces. He deserves to wake up a monster, it’s probably karmic. 

He looked down at the little black sippy cup. He grimaced, and brought it up to his face and took a sip.

Yup, blood. That sure is human blood.

Sora stared at him, wide eyed.

He swallowed, and coughed a little. It had a tingly sort of aftertaste that Riku didn’t dislike, and Riku found himself taking another sip.

“...Sorry. For yelling at you, I mean. You didn’t do anything to deserve it.” He sighed. “It’s just… been a long day.” 

Sora beamed. 

“Apology accepted! Let me know if you need any more. I tried to make it easy on you and just give it to you plain, but there is so much stuff you can make without needing to cook it! Just a few days ago I made some homemade ice cream- and boy was that a hard mess to clean up!- but it’s soooo good with a little bit of chocolate sauce drizzled on to-”

“Wait. You can eat chocolate?”

“Well, yeahhh. It’s not, like, _nutritional_ , but it’s not like it’d kill you.”

Riku leaned his head back on the pillow and huffed a laugh. “Oh, thank god.”

“What, you thought it’d be nothing but blood bags? I’d like, _literally_ die.” He waved his hands emphatically in the air. “ _Again!”_

Riku snorted. He almost couldn’t believe he ever found this guy threatening. And he actually _was_ starting to feel better, now that he had something in his system. 

He finished the sippy cup off in one go and Sora reached out to take it. “So now that I’m a mon- a _vampire_ , what next?” _When can I go back home?_

“Oh! Well, you should be good to move around in a couple days, and then after that we can work on desensitizing your system so you can be around people again.” Sora leaned back and put his hands behind his head with a grin. “And mayyybe, after that, I can teach you vampire secrets~”

“...vampire secrets?”

“Yeah! Like merging into shadows and growing bat wings and- ...claws.” Sora’s eyes trailed down, and Riku’s followed. Oh. Yeah.

“Do you remember anything about who attacked you?” 

“...no, not really. I think the guy had white hair, and he was pretty tall and muscular, but I don’t remember much else. Like I said, I was pretty… out of it.”

Sora had a vice grip on the sheets and, noticing Riku’s stare, worked to carefully smooth his fingers back out. His face was carefully blank in a way Riku hadn’t thought he’d been capable of after seeing him so animated up to now.

He blew out a slow, drawn out breath and smiled. “Well, we can’t really go back and change the past, but we can control the future. What matters is you’re still here and not- ...well.”

“Thanks. And thanks for saving me too, by the way. I’m pretty sure most people would’ve just left me to die.”

Sora jumped up and shot forward towards the bed, slamming both his hands down in a move that made Riku wince. “WHAT? no way!! Anyone would’ve done what I did, there’s no way someone else would just… leave you like that!”

Riku smiled. He liked this Sora much better than the serious one. “Well… thanks either way. I guess I sort of… owe you my life? ...or, unlife?”

He sat back in his chair with a huff. “Nah, you don’t owe me anything, except maybe lunch some time- don’t look at me like that, that’s not what I meant and you know it-” Riku laughed. “And technically we’re both still alive, we just sort of ‘died’ in the humanity sense. It’s… complicated.”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, anyway. You’re right, what’s done is done.” Riku had made his choices, and this is where they led him. At least the company isn’t too bad.

Neither of them spoke up for a bit, but the silence was comfortable. Riku’s injuries were down to ‘dull throbbing’ instead of ‘rending agony’ and he was content to just lie back and let his eyes slide shut. 

He’s had worse ends to bar nights than this. 

Well, maybe not, but a few choice nights _have_ come pretty close. 

“Hey, you’re still awake, right?” Riku cracked an eye open in response.

“You’re… alright with staying here for a while, right? We can probably work something else out if you don’t want to be around… here anymore.”

Sora was looking away, and Riku turned it over in his head. _Did_ he want to stay? He wasn’t really in any condition to head back home in the first place, even _without_ the… extraneous circumstances. And Sora, despite everything, felt like an honest sort of guy, when he got past the _inhuman_ part. They were both sort of in the same boat now, anyway.

If it meant free room and board for a couple days, it’s not like he had much to go home to in the first place.

“I’m... alright with staying here. I mean, if that’s okay.” He caught Sora’s eye and saw a quick glimmer of _something_ (hope?) before he pounced over to the bed. Sora threw his arms out in a motion to hug him, then pulled up abruptly short.

“Ah- ...sorry.” His face crumpled.

“No, it’s alright. Here.” Riku opened up an arm to him and Sora took the invitation without missing a beat. 

“Thank you!” He nuzzled his face on Riku’s chest (away from the bandages) and Riku’s heart skipped several beats. “Thank you for staying, I won’t let you down!”

Sora pulled away and Riku found himself following him until he caught himself. Sora was grinning a blinding, sharp toothed grin at him and Riku’s felt his face heat up. 

Was he actually _blushing_?? He hasn’t blushedin _years,_ he’s not some _schoolgirl_. He tried to play it off with a few well placed coughs. 

“Oh! Do you need some more to drink? Here, let me-” 

“Wait! Uh, actually, can, uh… _vampires_ still drink coffee?” He was already halfway out the door, but stopped short.

“...It’s like ten pm.”

“ _What??_ ” He felt himself pull a face, and Sora tried and failed to bite back a laugh.

“Dude, you’ve been out like, all day. Relax, I’ll go get you some coffee.” He walked back out the door and Riku stared after him, more out of curiosity than anything. 

Sora wasn’t really his usual type, but he found he was starting to enjoy being around him. Once he got past the initial _fear_ response, he kind of liked Sora’s energy, and the way Sora wore his heart on his sleeve. 

It’s been a long time since someone ever made him laugh this much, but he might just still be high-strung from nearly dying last night. 

Being friends with Sora didn’t sound all that bad though. 

With a deep sigh, Riku leaned back on his pillow. 

_Vampires_. Fuckin’ _wild_.

**Author's Note:**

> Vamp au where sora turns riku to save his life after finding him bleeding out in the streets and takes him to live in his fancy house to teach him how to vampire
> 
> Stay Tuned for the Next Episode:  
> In which Riku can’t seem to let the whole ‘I’m a monster’ thing go, and Sora’s gearing up to k-word a certain white haired anime villain the minute he can manage to track him down, but refuses to breathe a word about it to riku and set a bad vampire example.
> 
> (And maybe I next time actually do something with my ship tag, we’ll see how it goes)
> 
> This whole thing was supposed to be ~1k _max_ , but I couldn't bring myself to end it on a sour note OTL
> 
> ...  
> (Insert Riku discretely deleting ‘masc4masc’ from his dating profile)


End file.
